"Did I already pack underwear?"

I have checked whether I packed something three times and still not been sure. I have held a mental list that evaporated the moment I walked into the next room to act on it. If you have ADHD, you didn't need those examples; you have your own. Pick, Pack, Go exists partly because I got tired of collecting mine.

What's actually happening

Working memory is the mental scratchpad where you hold information while using it — the "eggs, milk, butter" you repeat on the way to the store. ADHD tends to make that scratchpad smaller and more volatile. Packing hammers it relentlessly: you need to hold what the trip requires, what you've already packed, what's still missing, why you walked into the bathroom, and what quantity of socks you decided on — all simultaneously, for an hour or more, with interruptions.

The failures are predictable and maddening. Duplicates, because you couldn't remember packing the first one. Missing essentials, because "charger" was in your head and then it wasn't. Lists written and then never consulted, because remembering that the list exists is itself a working memory task. None of this is carelessness. It's the scratchpad doing what an overloaded scratchpad does.

Where most apps get this backwards

A checklist app does externalize memory — that's genuinely useful, and it's why so many ADHDers build elaborate systems in general-purpose tools. But most packing apps only remember within a trip. The knowledge you build up — how many shirts you actually need, that your CPAP has a cord, that sunscreen lives with the beach stuff, that you always want a note reminding you which pocket the passport goes in — evaporates when the trip ends. Next trip, you reconstruct all of it from scratch, which is exactly the kind of repeated mental assembly ADHD working memory can't afford. People in ADHD communities complain about precisely this: templates and customizations that don't carry across trips.

What Pick, Pack, Go does instead

Pick, Pack, Go treats your packing knowledge as a permanent library, not a per-trip list. Every item in it carries its own memory so yours doesn't have to:

• Quantities are formulas, not numbers. "Underwear" isn't "pack 5" — it's days plus a buffer, computed from each trip's actual length. Decide once how you like to count; the app does the arithmetic on every trip afterward.
• Items know what they need. Anything electronic can be flagged as needing a charge and which charger it takes — packing the device reminds you about the cable, because the app remembers they go together, and some items depend on others outright (no "cancel the mail hold" on a trip that never had one).
• Notes stay attached. "The good adapter is in the desk drawer" lives on the item, forever, not in your head at 11 PM.
• Kits mirror the pre-packed-bag trick. Many ADHDers already keep a duplicate toiletry bag permanently packed — it works because it converts a memory task into a grab. Pick, Pack, Go ships 17 kits (Camera Kit, Beach Kit, Baby Gear, Ski Gear, Pet Care…) that drop into any trip as a unit, and you can build your own.
• The same item shows up wherever it's relevant — and stays in sync. Check it off in one place and it's checked off everywhere it appears, so there's no reconciling two lists in your head.

And everything you change — renamed sections, added items, adjusted formulas — persists in the library and in your saved templates. Pick, Pack, Go gets more shaped to you with every trip, which is the opposite of starting over.

It's all on your device, too. No account to remember a password for, no sync service to wonder about. The library is yours, locally, backed up with your phone.

What Pick, Pack, Go doesn't do

Pick, Pack, Go remembers what you tell it. It doesn't scan your closet, guess what you own, or learn things you never entered. The memory it offers is the reliable kind: exactly what you put in, still there next trip.

The research behind this page: Working memory →

Remembering what to pack is one problem. Remembering what you already packed — once it's out of sight — is a stranger one: object permanence.